Has anyone thought about simply introducing paper from China to the West more quickly? It doesn't give anything like the bang you get from the paper/printing combo, but it would probably multiply the supply of books ten fold. Instead of 90% of Greco-Roman classical writting being lost you'd probably only lose 40% to 60%. Allow the right survivals and you could justify a clockpunk Elizabethan setting that would be vast fun.

Has anyone thought about simply introducing paper from China to the West more quickly? It doesn't give anything like the bang you get from the paper/printing combo, but it would probably multiply the supply of books ten fold.

Introducing paper early enough possibly gets you a home grown printing industry in the west at a very early date.

The Romans appear to have been aware of printing (or at least stamping) as a way of decorating cloth. Given a relatively cheap medium to print onto I can easily see the same processes being modified in order to duplicate written texts.

The knock on effects of this are incalculable, aside from simply more texts surviving you potentially obtain a wider selection of surviving texts than ever existed in our history.

Unless there is some facet of Roman culture I am overlooking maturing print and paper making technologies are likely to have produced effects similar to maturing print technology in the 16th and 17th centuries. Historically this led to a significant rise in literacy and a corresponding increase in the distribution of ideas (at least amongst the middle classes) and a wider degree of public discourse on a number of subjects (ditto).

Introducing paper early enough possibly gets you a home grown printing industry in the west at a very early date.

The Romans appear to have been aware of printing (or at least stamping) as a way of decorating cloth. Given a relatively cheap medium to print onto I can easily see the same processes being modified in order to duplicate written texts.

The knock on effects of this are incalculable, aside from simply more texts surviving you potentially obtain a wider selection of surviving texts than ever existed in our history.

Unless there is some facet of Roman culture I am overlooking maturing print and paper making technologies are likely to have produced effects similar to maturing print technology in the 16th and 17th centuries. Historically this led to a significant rise in literacy and a corresponding increase in the distribution of ideas (at least amongst the middle classes) and a wider degree of public discourse on a number of subjects (ditto).

This would also very likely address/prevent questions about the authenticity of "certain" Roman-era texts. ;)

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"Despite (GURPS) reputation for realism and popularity with simulationists, the numbers are and always have been assessed in the service of drama." - Kromm

Introducing paper early enough possibly gets you a home grown printing industry in the west at a very early date.

The Romans appear to have been aware of printing (or at least stamping) as a way of decorating cloth. Given a relatively cheap medium to print onto I can easily see the same processes being modified in order to duplicate written texts.

That would be a great deal like what the Chinese did in the same period. Although the Roman alphabet would make moving to moble type far easier.

Quote:

The knock on effects of this are incalculable, aside from simply more texts surviving you potentially obtain a wider selection of surviving texts than ever existed in our history.

Unless there is some facet of Roman culture I am overlooking maturing print and paper making technologies are likely to have produced effects similar to maturing print technology in the 16th and 17th centuries. Historically this led to a significant rise in literacy and a corresponding increase in the distribution of ideas (at least amongst the middle classes) and a wider degree of public discourse on a number of subjects (ditto).

Try this what might have been Reality seed Zebulon Pike Western Explorer and War Hero. He died durring the War of 1812.

If you alter history and Pike lives, he's a good possibility to be a US president in the 1840s or 50's. From their you can go many directions. If, as many conspiracy theorists suggest, he was in league with Burr and Wilkinson, then you can place a traitor in the Oval Office. Or maybe he's just blackmailed by a European power. New research suggests that Pike was basically a nationalist dertermined to win glory for himself. That could work out many different ways. Since Burr was profoundly anti-slavery (his best trait in my eyes) perhaps he had a positive influence on Pike. Maybe Pike would have been an Anti-Slavery President. This could trigger an early American Civil War with a radically different outcome.

Last evening (4/8/14) I heard about the Holocene Impact Working Group. This leads to several interesting ideas. Example: Remove the 535AD Event. The events or event (it's a big mystery) changed things on all inhabited continents. Remove those changes and the world looks radically different.

Another way to go is to introduce cometary impacts at key points in history. Smash Western Europe with a dozen comets in 1750AD. The Americas go off in their own way (the Anglophone settlements had the population and technical skills and would be way ahead). Asian developements would probably be slow or stagnation. PCs could be Americans exploring the ruins of Europe, Jihadists seeking to find and conquer "the Golden Apple," or Europeans trying to rebuild their lands or escape to the Americas.

Ken Hite created Lucifer-5 a parallel Earth that divereges when the Tunguska Event happens over St. Petersburg, instead in the wilds of Siberia. Even without the Space Opera goodies collapsing Russia in 1908 creating a Kaiserine Empire streaching from the Rhine to the Pacific would create a grand Kalter Kreig campaign.

Try this idea, have a Turkish Peter the Great. Or at least a guy who could convince the Madhhab of the value of Printing. The Ottomans could have chosen to keep up with Europe technologically, they didn't. This was mainly a matter of the type of government the Sublime Porte ran. However, if the Turks, aided by Renegados (European converts to Islam in the pre-1800 period), were to embrace at least oceanic navigation and the printing press, the Ottoman state might easily have done as well as the Russians.

Place your great European reformer about a century ahead of Peter Romanov. If the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the Dutch Revolts caught the man's attention, and he got the power to lead the Ottoman state by the mid-17th century, the Turks might have enough lead time on Russia to take control of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and Persia, before the Russians are fully in the game.

From here you can go several ways. Any of which creates lovely complex power politics for your game world.

WWII Variant: Isolationists win a bigger presence in the US, enough to derail entry into the European war, but not enough to derail lend-lease. The Brits, retain all of their MAUD (Military Application of Uranium Detonation) research, and use Canada as their primary research base. First nuclear detonation is an act of desperation during the 1946 cross channel invasion of England, annihilating the Nazi beachead.

What if one of the two WWII bombs fizzled? Prototype nukes weren't idiot proof.

Little Boy was close to foolproof: they were happy to use it without a test of the design. The easy way for the bomber to get caught is a parachute failure, giving it far less time to get away before the radar altimeter on the bomb sets it off. However, this would not have much effect on the larger issues, since there were other B-29s in the area to observe, and the cause of the failure would be obvious.

A failure of the Fat Man bomb was much more plausible, which was why the Trinity test was done to validate the design.

The demand for unconditional surrender dated from early 1943, and had been repeated in July 1945. The US was making preparations to invade Japan, and would almost certainly have succeeded, although at a very high cost in lives on both sides. They weren't betting on the atomic bomb to end the war; it was too secret for that.